Thursday, October 02, 2008

links

I've found it to be enormously useful in the past, as they have just about everything there for free (including all sort of other stuff: Clausewitz, Lao Tse, Machiavelli, Kant, Hegel, etc.). very useful if you're trying to track down a quotation, check something of just want free access to a text.

I thought this next one might be useful to some of you: when I first started trying to make sense of Capital I found one book (reccomended by John) to be patricularly useful: Felton Shortall's The Incomplete Marx. It's very dry, but very helpful, as it basically gives you a run through of Volumes 1, 2 and 3. It stresses the centrality of class struggle and revolution to Marx's work, and describes Capital as an unfinished project. There's a copy in the library (I think), but you can get in free from the library of a site called Libcom:

I've used that forum on several occasions; sometimes to run ideas past people, to ask questions, or just to relieve boredom. There are almost always online reading groups of Volume 1 that you can look at or participate in, as well as endlessly convoluted and heated debates about the more confusing aspects of what Marx was trying to say and do. Please don't take anything that anyone says there as gospel, and obviously don't reference postings when writing an essay (at least not unless you're doing some complicated anthropological study of Marxist internet forums). That said, I thought discussion there might provide a helpful supplment to the seminars (should anyone find themselves to be really eager).